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Traditional Greek New Year Cake (Vassilopitta)

First of all, I'd like to wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year! In Greece we traditionally have the Vassilopitta cake at New Year. A coin or special good luck charm called the floori is placed in it and whoever gets the slice with this in it supposedly has good luck all the year. Slices are not only cut for the people there, but also for the House, God, Christ and whoever else you wish. Obviously if God or Christ's slice has the coin or charm, it doesn't mean that they're going to have good luck (!) but that you will feel their influence all year.

There are a few different ways of making Vasilopitta, and this is just one of them - which we like!

Ingredients

900g self-raising white flour

9 eggs – yolks and whites separated

240g butter at room temperature

Juice from 7 medium oranges

750g sugar

Grated rind from one orange

120ml brandy

1 teaspoon baking powder

5 tablespoons ground almonds

0.6g vanilla powder

100g icing sugar

Preparation

Beat the sugar and butter in the mixer for 10 minutes.

Add the egg yolks one at a time and continue beating for another 10 minutes.

Welcome to our blog! Here you can learn how to prepare delicious, traditional Greek dishes from recipes used in the home by local mothers and grandmothers! A lot of them are well-known and others perhaps not so well-known outside Greece. These are all recipes prepared by my wife Maria - she loves cooking and I love eating, so we make a great team!

We live on the island of Corfu in Greece and Maria comes from a family of chefs. Her recipes combine know-how with the simplicity of local, traditional Greek cooking.

These recipes are all for 4- 6 servings (depending on your appetite!) but if anything is left over it can easily be saved for the next day, which is what we do.

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